Scourge

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For other uses, see Scourge (disambiguation).

A scourge (from the Italian scoriada, ultimately from the Latin excoriare = "to flay" and corium = "skin") is a whip or lash, especially a multi-tong type used in order to inflict severe corporal punishment or self-mortification on the back.

As for most instruments of flagellation, the terms in various languages are often used imprecisely, so confusion is always lurking.
reproduction of a medieval flagellant scourge
reproduction of a medieval flagellant scourge

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[edit] Description

The typical scourge (in Latin: flagrum; flagellum is the English derivative) has several thongs or lashes attached to a single handle, Compare in the Scottish tawse (equally leather, but usually only two or three and without a separate handle) and the cat o' nine tails (the well-known naval version was made from thick ropes, often with knots; the army and prison version usually from leather).

The scourge or flail, and the solid crook, are the two symbols of power and domination depicted in the hands of Osiris in ancient Egyptian monuments; these show the unchanging form of the instrument throughout the ages. It should be noted, though, that the flail depicted in Egyptian mythology was an agricultural instrument used to thresh wheat, and not a recorded device for corporal punishment.

The priests of Cybele scourged themselves and others, and such stripes were considered sacred.

From a Biblical quotation, scorpio 'scorpion' is a Latin term for a severe Roman flagrum. Hard material was fixed onto multiple thongs to give them a flesh-tearing 'bite' [1 Kings 12:11: ...My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions]. The choice of the name testifies how much the hellish pain caused by the small arachnid, which is well-known in the mediterranean world, was feared, as many biblical passages testify. To its generous use in Roman times testitfies the existence of the Latin words Flagrifer 'carrying a whip' and Flagritriba 'often lashed slave'.

15th century woodcutting of flagellants scourging themselves
15th century woodcutting of flagellants scourging themselves

Scourging played a famous role as the punishment inflicted during the Passion on Jesus Christ (together with a crown of thorns on his head) prior to his crucifixion, disabling him from carrying his cross all the way to Golgotha.

Scourging was soon adopted as a sanction in the monastic discipline of the fifth and following centuries. Early in the fifth century it is mentioned by Palladius in the "Historia Lausiaca"[1], and Socrates Scholasticus[2] tells us that, instead of being excommunicated, offending young monks were scourged. See the sixth-century rules of St. Cæsarius of Arles for nuns[3], and of St. Aurelian of Arles [4]. Thenceforth scourging is frequently mentioned in monastic rules and councils as a preservative of discipline [5]. Its use as a punishment was general in the seventh century in all monasteries of the severe Columban rule.[6]

Canon law (Decree of Gratian, Decretals of Gregory IX) recognized it as a punishment for ecclesiastics; even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it appears in ecclesiastical legislation as a punishment for blasphemy, concubinage and simony. Though doubtless at an early date a private means of penance and mortification, such use is publicly exemplified in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the lives of St. Dominic Loricatus[7] and St. Peter Damian (died 1072). The latter wrote a special treatise in praise of self-flagellation; though blamed by some contemporaries for excess of zeal, his example and the high esteem in which he was held did much to popularize the voluntary use of the scourge or "discipline" as a means of mortification and penance. Thenceforth it is met with in most medieval religious orders and associations.

The practice was, of course, capable of abuse, and so arose in the thirteenth century the fanatical sect of the Flagellants, though in the same period we meet with the private use of the "discipline" by such saintly persons as King Louis IX of France and Elisabeth of Hungary.

[edit] Metaphoric use

Semi-literal usages such as "the scourge of God" for Attila the Hun (i.e. "God's whip to punish the nations with") led to metaphoric uses to mean a severe affliction, e.g. "the scourge of drug abuse". As a result, some people forget its literal meaning and seem to imagine a connection with "scour" -to clean something by scrubbing it vigorously.

[edit] Homonym

"The Scourge" as used by Modern day Wiccans (especially Gardnerian and New Arthurian), is an instrument to create and return from an Altered State of Consciousness. During Rituals, these sub-groups of Wiccans bind initiates, have them kneel with their heads upon the floor, and strike the tailbone at the base of the spine for a specified number of times in order to induce an Altered State of Consciousness. Furthermore, the scourge has been used to help an initiate return from such an Altered State as well. See also Catholicism, Arwythur's Wicca 101.

[edit] Sources and references

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ c. vi
  2. ^ Hist. Eccl., IV, xxiii
  3. ^ Patrologia Latina, LXVII, 1111
  4. ^ ibid., LXVIII, 392, 401-02
  5. ^ Hefele, "Concilieng.", II, 594, 656
  6. ^ St. Columbanus, in "Regula Cœnobialis", c. x, in Patrologia Latina, LXXX, 215 sqq.; for later centuries of the early Middle Ages see Thomassin, "Vet. ac nova ecc. disciplina, II (3), 107; Du Cange, "Glossar. med. et infim. latinit.", s. v. "Disciplina"; Gretser, "De spontaneâ disciplinarum seu flagellorum cruce libri tres" (Ingolstadt, 1603); Kober, "Die körperliche Züchtigung als kirchliches Strafmittel gegen Cleriker und Mönche" in Tüb. "Quartalschrift" (1875).
  7. ^ Patrologia Latina, CXLIV, 1017; the surname means 'strapped'
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